Research proposed here examines two major problems in speech perception. The first major issue is the study of vowel perception. It has long been argued that perception of vowels depends on the listener adjusting to the vocal tract of the speaker on the basis of some sample of on-going speech. Our research indicates that vowels are perceived with high accuracy; that context from a given speaker results in little improvement in accuracy and that "steady-state vowels" are poorly perceived in most circumstances. Studies of speaker differences, consonantal context, on-going speech versus citation form, and electronically modified vowels, are proposed. The aim is to find dynamic cues in syllables that can be used for direct perception of vowels. The second major problem has to do with characterizing speech perception. A variety of explorations of speech processing are proposed ranging from traditional identification and discrimination studies through reaction time studies to training studies. The emphasis is on describing in detail how listeners can and do perceive speech stimuli.